[439] Cf. Arist., N. H., V. 19. The σκώληξ of Aristotle is an immature product of generation which grows and finally becomes a pupa, or (so Aristotle believed) an egg giving birth to the perfect animal.
[440] Ep., II. 2; Carmina, XIX. and XXI. Fortunately for Sidonius, Clermont was in the Auvergne, so he could be at once piscator and episcopus.
[441] IX. 32. “In Aquitania salmo fluvialis marinis omnibus prefertur.” To make this clear piscibus should be understood after omnibus. The salmon is the fish most frequently found in the débris of the French caves, many of which are in Aquitania, so Palæolithic and Plinian man at any rate ate tooth to tooth in their preference. See Introduction. It is somewhat amazing, considering their opsophagy and the excellence of the fish, that down to 500 a.d. no Greek, and no Latin writer, except Pliny, Ausonius, and Sidonius, Ep. II. 2, mentions the Salmonidæ. I cannot forgo Ausonius’s epithet—mouth-filling yet appropriate—for us, who dwell in “this blessed Isle, this England,” Aquilonigenasque Britannos.
[442] Salmon appear but infrequently in representations, but Plate 8 in C. W. King’s Roman Antiquities at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, London, 1879, shows in colours a mosaic dedicated to the god Nodons by Flavius Senilis, an officer in command of the fleet stationed off the Severn: this mosaic includes a number of salmon. King, ib. Plate 13, 2, is a diadem of beaten bronze representing a fisherman with a pointed cap in the act of hooking with undoubtedly a tight line a fine salmon: cf. A. B. Cook’s discussion of these finds in Folk-Lore, 1906, XVI. 37 ff. Nodons was in fact, like Nuada, a fish god, indeed a Celtic understudy for Neptune. If salmon figure little in representations, they bulk large in laws, and in commissariats for campaigns, e.g. 3000 dried salmon were ordered by Edw. II. in his war with Bruce.
[443] From Professor R. C. Jebbs’ Translation, p. 176 (line 240 ff.).
[444] Cf. Plutarch, Symp., IV. 4. “The place where we live is to fish no less than Hell: for no sooner come they unto it, but dead they immediately be.” Holland’s Translation.
[445] For the story of Glaucus, see Æsch., Frag. 28; Paus., IX. 22, 6 and 7; Virgil, Æn., VI. 36; and Athen., VII. 47, 8. Ausonius follows the version according to which Glaucus had been metamorphosed by Circe, and then on tasting the herb regained his human form as the “Old Man of the Sea.” Ovid, Met., XIII. 898 ff.
[446] Mosella, 88. “Purpureisque Salar stellatus tergora guttis,” and ibid., 129 f., “Qui necdum Salmo, necdum Salar, ambiguusque Amborum medio, sario, intercepte sub ævo.”
[447] Mosella, 122 ff. Polemius Silvius, Index Dierum Festorum, more than half a century later, seems the second—such is the infrequency of mention.
[448] C. Mayhoff here prints J. Hardouin’s conjecture isox, which was based on Hesychius’ gloss, ἴσοξ ἰχθὺς ποιὸς κητώδης.